> On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 13:50 +0200, Petteri Räty wrote:
>
>>Greg Tassone wrote:
>>
>>>FYI: There is nothing "unstable" about JDK 1.5 (or Java 5).
>
> ...
>
>> It has simply
>>
>>>been package-masked here at Gentoo because there have been some
>>>lingering ebuilds that didn't compile cleanly with it. Hopefully it is
>>>going to be unmasked VERY soon.
>>>
>>
>>It also by default produces class files that are not compatible with
>>earlier versions etc.
>
> ...
>
>>You can safely make 1.5 the user vm using java-config -s. But just be
>>sure you don't ever set it as the system vm.
>
>
> Very true. Just to clear up any confusion for others on the list, this
> means that if you are trying to run a 1.5 JDK as the primary on your
> system at the same time you have a 1.4 JDK running, the 1.4 JDK will be
> unable to use most of the code compiled from the 1.5 JDK (by default).
>
> Since most packages on the Gentoo distro compile themselves from source
> (Java included), having a 1.5 JDK as your *system VM* means that your
> Java applications would be compiled so that ONLY Java 5 (and higher)
> runtimes could use the applications. This is a show-stopper for those
> still running a 1.4 JDK (at least for non-developers, who should know
> how to deal with this stuff anyway):
>
> Choices:
>
> * Run only 1.5 or higher on your system (with no intention of ever
> going back down). Note that as of a while ago certain packages
> in the Portage tree still required 1.4, so this approach may
> preclude installing those packages from Portage.
> --OR--
> * Take Petteri's advice and leave 1.4 as the system VM, and set
> your "user" VM to 1.5 (or higher) if desired.
>
> HTH to clarify...
>
> Greg

So who wants to run a 1.4 JDK? And what, exactly, prevents anything
from being compiled under 1.5? The only thing I can think of is the
user of the newly reserved word 'enum'. Big deal. How long has 1.5
been around now?
My perception is that there is only an ideological impediment to going
with 1.5. That is that it will be a long time before the
Stallman-approved JVMs support 1.5. So, the Java herd on Gentoo Stalls
the adoption of 1.5, just to "prove" that 1) you don't need it, and 2)
it's a very bad thing. Or at least it will be until the "free as in
slaves to ideology" crowd get their act together. Thanks for nothing.
Peter
--
Peter B. West <http://cv.pbw.id.au/>
Folio <http://defoe.sourceforge.net/folio/>